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“I just got my American citizenship,” exclaimed Chilean designer Maria Cornejo backstage before her fall runway show. “And it got me thinking, what is my identity?” It’s an unexpected starting point for a designer as established as Cornejo and with a loyal core following that enables and encourages her to continue along a similar trajectory from one season to the next, fine-tuning as she goes. But this recent introspection, while in no way throwing her off course, brought new and voluminous silhouettes into play. That signature draping, although not entirely done away with, was pulled back to allow room for a new, exaggerated cocoon-like silhouette on everything from languid silk dresses to llama-coated outerwear. Cornejo also toyed with a more structured take on tailoring—slim-fitting pants cut to loosely twist around the legs, and waist-high, calf-length skirts with a daring central split.

It’s fair to say that all that soul-searching took Cornejo to a significantly more colorful place. While shadowy black, gray, and white tones were still very much the mainstay of her palette, accents of cobalt (which has seeped into her past couple of collections) and rich, royal purple made for optimistic additions. One funnel-neck sweater and a lean, ankle-length skirt, drenched in a luminous shade of lemon, might end up being too hot for some of Cornejo’s devotees to handle. But that, along with her silk iridescent printed sheath-like dresses, seemed to hark back to her early post-punk days in London. “My identity is what I’ve become over the years,” continued the designer, who has lived in Britain, Paris, and New York. “It’s not English, or French, it’s my own thing.” All things considered, it appears Cornejo knew exactly who she was all along.